Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
What’s fun about writing this series based on first time watches is that I only have a cursory awareness of the weird places the franchise goes. When Amityville is discussed in horror circles, you hear about “the one with the clock” or “the one with the dollhouse,” as well as insinuations that at some point the films go completely off the rail.
That means that pressing play on each successive entry is accompanied by an “is this it?” question: Is this one of the infamous entries? Is this where the franchise loses its way?
I’m happy to report that while The Evil Escapes isn’t a great film, it certainly isn’t a horrible entry in the series. If anything, it’s on par with Amityville 3-D, which had a larger budget and better effects, but a terribly boring lead.
What The Evil Escapes does have, however, is a lamp. Yes, folks, this is “the one with the lamp”!!! If you’ve never seen the film, nothing can prepare you for just how horrifically ugly this source of illumination is. Full credit to the art department for creating one of cinema’s ugliest props…and to writer/director Sandor Stern for having nearly every character comment on just how atrocious it is.
After three theatrically released Amityville films, The Evil Escapes has the distinction of being the first made-for-television movie in the franchise. For the NBC production, Stern, the screenwriter of the original film, was brought in to write and direct, which makes sense given his previous ties to both the franchise, as well as his extensive experience shooting TV.
Despite blowing up at the end of 3-D, the opening of The Evil Escapes confirms that the Long Island house with the infamous windows is alive and kicking priests about. After hospitalizing young Father Kibbler (Frederic Lehne), the house goes dormant and the evil settles into a hideous tree-like lamp with arm appendages and a large bulb on top. This monstrosity attracts the attention of Helen Royce (Peggy McCay) who buys it as a gag gift for her sister Alice Leacock (Jane Wyatt). Shortly after mailing the lamp to Alice in Dancott, California, Helen dies from tetanus after pricking her hand on the cursed furniture, which is both hilarious and bizarre.
Alice’s house is not too dissimilar from the one on Long Island in that it has large windows in the attic and rests atop of a cliff overlooking the water. Just as the lamp arrives, so does Alice’s widowed adult daughter Nancy (Patty Duke) with her three children in tow: teenagers Amanda (Zoe Trilling) and Brian (Aron Eisenberg), as well as Jessica (Brandy Gold), playing the character like Reagan from The Exorcist meets Carol Anne from Poltergeist.
Nancy and the kids are grieving the recent loss of patriarch Frank (an uncredited Jon Rice) and Jessica maintains she can still communicate with her father. Predictably Jessica confuses the entity in her grandmother’s new eye-sore for her father, and since Jessica is the most vulnerable member of the family, she eventually becomes possessed. Of course, this is only after Fred the parrot is cooked in a toaster oven, teen handyman Danny (James Stern, the director’s son) loses a hand in a garburator, and plumber Jake (Gary Davies) is drowned in black sludge under the house.
Critics of the film often point out how ludicrous the premise of a possessed lamp is, but the rules of Amityville have never made sense, so the new demonic instrument isn’t really that much of a stretch. The shift from theatrical to video does, however, mean that the production has a smaller budget and a shorter shooting schedule, resulting in more brightly lit sets (there was no time to adjust the lighting), a seven act structure to accommodate for commercial breaks, and – in a true sign of the late 80s-times – the kids’ wardrobe is reflective of the patterns and colors that were popular on the small screen at the time.
The focus of The Evil Escapes on the volatile relationship between mothers and daughters helps to keep the human aspects of the film interesting in the first half. Alice wants to support her daughter through a challenging emotional and financial period, but she has a tendency to make biting comments, which include blaming Frank for dying unexpectedly and chastising Nancy for dropping out of College to start a family. These real life moments are compounded when the evil begins to cause problems around the house, prompting Nancy and the two eldest children to fear that Alice will regret inviting them to stay.
Sadly this subplot is effectively dropped once Father Kibbler jets across the country to focus their attention to the lamp and little Jessica becomes possessed. The back half of the film is still filled with fun and unusual moments, and the one-two star power of Duke and Wyatt ensures the film is always watchable, but the tension between Alice and Nancy and how it is replicated in Nancy’s relationship with her own daughters is sadly lost.
The Amityville Horror Awards
- Best Death: RIP poor Jake the plumber. The effects work on the expanding pipe looks good, which is followed by a deluge of tar-like liquid spewing on top of the poor, trapped man until he’s submerged! It’s very fun.
- Best Sequence: Alice, Nancy and Kibbler all get to do something in the climax, which is a nice touch. Add in a levitating Jessica, a bit with an axe and an old lady hefting a heavy lamp out a window like it’s a matchstick and this end of The Evil Escapes is a surprisingly good time.
- Best FX: My biggest disappointment is that the lamp’s arms don’t actually move (though Frank and the demon’s face do comically appear in the globe on top). That means the visual of Jessica floating out of the shadows of the attic with a knife takes the top FX prize.
- Best line: Nancy, as she and Alice survey Jessica’s destroyed bedroom: “Mom, if you say Jessica’s responsible for this, I will hit you!”
Next time: we’re going Canadian with our fifth entry, The Amityville Curse (1990).
The post The Amityville IP: ‘The Evil Escapes’ Brought the Franchise Straight-to-Video with a Possessed Lamp appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.